With the arrival of Peak Oil, the curtain has closed on Act 1 of the drama Petroleum Man. What will happen in Act 2? Chekhov said, "If there's a gun on the wall at the beginning of the play, by the end it must go off." In the world's nuclear arsenal are many guns on the wall. If life copies art, will there be an Act 3 in which the players, having learned their lesson the hard way, live sustainably? To explore these and other questions... FTW's Act 2 Blog. Read, comment, take heart! Orkin

32 comments:

I really appreciate this community of thoughtful, intelligent posters (for the most part :-)

I have no problem paying $10/mo for CollapseNet. I find this forum not just informative, but psychologically necessary in these crazy times. It's good to know there are people out there who give a shit about what's coming down.

On another note, it's been colder than normal where I live for the last few weeks, and I've had to start getting creative about how I'm going to put my tomatoes in the ground. They're 2-3 feet tall in their pots. I grew them from seed. It made me ponder how I'd be feeling if I had to RELY on my home-grown food for survival. I'd be stressing out big-time right now, worrying if the weather will be warm enough this summer for certain crops.

This is what people 200 years ago had to deal with, too. When there was crop failure, there was starvation. If my garden fails, there's always the grocery store...

I have a safeguard in that I joined a CSA, too.

Anyway, I came up with a creative solution on how to get those tomatoes in next week, despite night-time temps not reaching 50 yet. I'll put wire cages around them, then wrap the cage in plastic (clear garden kind) to keep the plants warmer. Damn, imagine how creative I'd be if it meant the difference between life and death!

Help!!! Can someone, please, explain to me how comes the US is paying for the Israeli defense shield with all the budget cuts and deficit sky rocking back home??? Especially knowing pretty damn well that Israel is in a lot better economic situation then the US!!!!!People, what's happening in this world??? !! UNBELIEVABLE !!

US to fund installation of Israeli rocket defence system (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8681919.stm)

This may have been answered in previous blogs and is probably not the correct place to ask, but I have not been able to find an answer on my own. When will "Collapse" be available on DvD? I purchased your book Crossing the Rubicon and would be very interested in seeing your Documentary.

Your having recently quoted Jay Hanson's observation that "Our problem isn't so much a shortage of resources as a longage of people" suggests to perspicacious minds (such as shown by yours and others' here at FTW) that it might be worthwhile looking into 'why & how' this "problem" of "a longage of people" came into existence in the first place.

We (R & D/RanD) are keenly aware of how resistant many (if not most) people prove themselves to be (another issue that begs for resolution) when it comes to solving "problems" by examining them through the mechanics of cause & effect, which mechanism we see as being the only means (other than historically interminable trial & error) whereby our species can free itself from the otherwise virtually interminable cycle of ascendancies to empire which culminate in collapse.

Mike Mason is a 27 year oil-industry veteran who worked on oil rigs at BP facilities on the North Slope of Alaska. On January 21, 2005, Corporate Crime Reporter ran an article detailing Mason’s allegations of BP falsifying the results of blowout preventer tests. At the time, Mason was working for Nabors Alaska Drilling Inc. – a BP contractor

...Critics say Nalco, a joint partnership with Exxon Chemical that was spun off in the 1990s, boasts oil-industry insiders on its board of directors and among its executives, including an 11-year board member at BP and a top Exxon executive who spent 43 years with the oil giant.

"It's a chemical that the oil industry makes to sell to itself, basically," said Richard Charter, a senior policy adviser for Defenders of Wildlife.

The older of the two Corexit products that BP has used in the Gulf spill, Corexit 9527, was also sprayed in 1989 on the 11-million-gallon slick created by the Exxon Valdez grounding in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

Cleanup workers suffered health problems afterward, including blood in their urine and assorted kidney and liver disorders. Some health problems were blamed on the chemical 2-butoxyethanol, an ingredient discontinued in the latest version of Corexit, Corexit 9500, whose production Nalco officials say has been ramped up in response to the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

When it comes to aid for Israel, there are basically no rules or logic. AIPAC has long been one of the most influential lobbying groups in Washington, and Israel has been the top recipient of U.S. aid for what seems like forever. For many years, aid to Israel and Egypt made up two thirds of all U.S. foreign aid -- with Israel getting the Lion's share, of course.

I would guess that our military sees some kind of strategic benefit from having missiles in Israeli hands, but as with most government decisions, the value to U.S. citizens is questionable, at best.

There is an interesting (though somewhat dated) overview of U.S. aid expenditures here:http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/31987.pdf

Just for a laugh, you should be aware that the U.S. does sometimes give aid to the Palestinians, too. "On December 8, 2004, President Bush approved $20 million in direct assistance to the PA (Palestinian Authority) -- to pay off overdue Palestinian utility bills to Israeli companies."

So we gave them money, but only so they could pay the Israelis...

"UNBELIEVABLE" would indeed be a good description of the situation, Mr. Drei -- but these days nothing coming out of our government is truly surprising...

1. How about to control oil and implement every strategy conceivable to do it?2. How about to implement every strategy conceivable to control the direction of Judaean-Christian prophecy while you're at it?3. How about having nothing better to do than the above?

1.When CollapseNet will be live soon, and this blog will be frozen; what other ways do some people have to keep in touch with each other?

I have taken the liberty to create a FTW Act2 Alumni group here:http://groups.google.com/group/ftw-act-2-alumni

It should serve initialy as a directory for some of the people here who don't want to lose sight of each other, or facilitate further discussion.

MCR stated in his video on USTREAM.TV that we should have options rather than solutions, so in that spirit this group could at the very least create more redudancy.

(Disclaimer: From where I stand -Amsterdam, The Netherlands- I see little chance of me joining CollapseNet.)

2.In the recent video on USTREAM.TV, MCR gets very excited when he hears that a WIFI router can be repurposed to function as a FM-transceiver. I investigated the claim but couldn't find a clear cut solution. It almost cetainly isn't something mundane to do (it involves reprogramming/flashing the Router's software and possibly replacing parts).

However, when looking for solutions I got very inspired by alternative technological solutions that arose which are feasible in Urban or Sub-Urban areas.

It involves, again, the WIFI Routers. Domesticaly they work as the single distributor of a uplink (your wire to the ISP). It is however possible to configure them to work in a network of Routers. So while you first only have a single 'bubble' of connection, these 'bubbles' now interlock and messages can be routed in between. I won't go into the technicalities of how we should set up services (Email, websites, etc.) in such an Intranet right now, but its something I wish to look into.

Your ISP, message board provider etc. may all variably experience problems, go out of bussiness and what have you. Again, options is the mantra here and since the people you will want to talk to when the time is there are likely to be locals, this option should not be overlooked.

To not see anybody in the US questioning the geopoliticoeconomic-existential interactions between the US and Israel speaks volumes of both nation's government's success in overwhelming their respective citizenry's ability to function in a truly democratic manner, which moves all of us to yield to their/our common master by default. And what is their/our common master?